Christin's Words from Sunshine Hill

If it is to be music

you must be present to it, must offer to it

a profound self-remembering.

-from Altar Music

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I SEE YOU

Chances are a mountain lion visited my yard during the night. He was a big one, if in fact the visitor was really a lion and not a bear. My guess is a lion. Here's the image in my head – first he drank all the water in Rita's gallon dish while Rita went crazy with alarm barking inside the closed garage. (This is the moment I ought to have turned on the outside lights, but I was on the couch watching the Olympics.) Then he went round the house into the back yard where he saw a large dark crouching thing. This would be my heavy log glider by John's memorial tree. It's covered for the winter with a dark green protector. The lion attacked, (It's my imagination telling me this, as well as some investigation of the site) and his weight and the force of his leap knocked the glider out of its wooden base backwards onto the lawn.

When I saw it this morning, out of the blue, it barely seemed real. I trekked across the yard in my bathrobe and slippers to make sure my eyes weren't seeing things. Then I reached down to pick up the glider and slid it back into the holes that are meant to secure it. Heavy, heavy, heavy! I considered the bigger animals: deer, bear, lion. Had to be the lion.

Yesterday afternoon I'd decided to go into town to see the film, AVATAR. I'd been eager to see it since it came out, and finally decided to just do it. It's the first theater-movie I've attended alone since I lived in California and saw CROCODILE DUNDEE while John was working late one night at the TRACON. Yesterday's movie left me enthralled. Jeff said I'd like it, and he was understating. I came out of there with a sense of connectedness. I wanted to live on Pandora! I wanted to see the light in everything. I can imagine taking a barefooted step in the grass and having light burst up in brilliant colors around my feet. I can imagine connecting the pulse of my soul to that of another creature and feeling the beat of the other's heart. As with any great myth, this one can be seen from several perspectives – from fantasy, to education in economics, to the revelation of the Divine in everything. At home, after the movie, I looked up to the mountains and down at the little mushrooms that had sprung up at my feet. I walked out to John's tree to make sure it had little buds of hope after last summer's drought. It does. "I see you," I said, as the Na'vi say to the light within creatures of their world. I told the tree, the mountains, the tiny mushrooms the grass beneath my feet.

I should, then, not have been surprised that during that night something enormous and alive would visit the space where John's tree stands. Maybe the big cat was saying, "I see you, too."

Just read several of your past posts Christin. Like you, I've been tucked into silence, working on "the" book (finished the first draft) and editing another memoir (A View From the Lake) for a May publication.

Did you find out what was stalking your yard, drinking your pet's water and attacking the glider? Any tracks?

I did finally figure out who the stalker was. An enormous steer the color of night who got out of the neighbor's gate and made his way up the hill into my yard, drank all the water from Rita's dish, and then attacked my glider in the back yard. He's now locked behind two fences, so I think I needn't worry about his any more.

The Root of Beauty

THE EDGE OF TENDERNESS

THE BLUE SHAWL

The FarNear Journals

GYPSY BONES

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About Me

I'm a writer and observer of beauty in nature and people, a singer of praise and a dreamer who stares into both light and darkness hoping to see someday the Face of God.
My journey has led from the northern lakes, to a convent on the prairie, to lifelong education including a doctorate in ministry, to a vocation of midwifery of souls, to this place, Casa Chiara, where the light shines and John Sack and I join our lives, care for nature, pray and contemplate, study and write.
Published Works:
THE ROOT OF BEAUTY: A SPIRITUAL MEMOIR, THE EDGE OF TENDERNESS: A MEMOIR, THE BLUE SHAWL,THE FARNEAR JOURNALS, GYPSY BONES,
ALTAR MUSIC,
CIRCLE OF MYSTERIES,
WOMANCHRIST,
BLESSINGS,
FINDING STONE,
CARING COMMUNITY,
A CRY IN THE DESERT.
Los Angeles Times Best Novel of 2000 for ALTAR MUSIC.
Recipient of four prizes/commendations for CIRCLE OF MYSTERIES.